The media - both the old part and the new 'n' improved online part - are as excited as a puppy at feeding time about Tiny Blur's appearance at the Chilcot enquiry. Oooh! Oooh!

Excitable commentators would have us believe that Tone will go in bright-eyed and enthusiastic, but be led out in handcuffs, a broken man.

We all know that there wasn't a legal case for the war. That there was no thought given to whether this was the right thing to do, or to what would happen if it was done.

We also know that this was really America's - well, Dubya's - idea, and we all know that Tony only joined in because his tongue was jammed so far up Bush's arse that he had no choice but to follow him wherever he went.

We also know that the press were more than happy to go along with the whole fucking charade. To faithfully reprint - on the front page, in huge letters - every single lie and distortion that Blair and Campbell cooked up.

We all know - even without this ridiculously expensive show trial - that we were misled, lied to and ignored, while politicians abused their power to do just whatever the fuck they wanted to.

So it would be great if Tony - and all the others - acknowledged that. Made some form of apology. Suggested some ways in which redress could be made.

But - much as we might fancy that idea - that's not gonna happen, is it?

No. Tony will squirm uncomfortably for a few hours. His every word, gesture and nervous blink will be relayed in real time to the waiting world. Then, at the end of it, he'll saunter out, past the cameras, onto an aeroplane, and resume his obscenely lucrative world tour.

This time next week, he'll be evangelising to some Christians, or some Capitalists, or a combination of the two, as if nothing had happened.

It would be lovely to see Blair whip out an onion, dab at his eyes, tearfully confess to having done wrong, and announce that he's prepared to take his punishment like a man, and that he'll do whatever it takes to make thing right.

There was a good discussion on this on QT last night. I think the basic problem, yet again, is that there's a mismatch between public and official perception of what this inquiry is for. It's not really about determining legality or finding out whether or not we were lied to, or even assigning blame; it's about government process in beginning conflict. It will prove vastly unsatisfactory to the majority of the public.

A million people died. Millions more were displaced and are still displaced. We used depleted uranium. People will be dying from that for decades to come. The security on the ground now, what there is of it, has only been won by ghettoisation and the bribery of violent men. It's been an unmitigated horror.

On a personal level, I don't give the chuff from a flying monkey about international law - it's as plain on the nose on Cyrano de Bergerac's face that the whole Iraq misadventure is a war crime. But this inquiry is completely irrelevant to that.

The best we can hope for is that he never worms his way into any position of responsibility in the future. Unfortunately we're not even likely to be accorded that much. I bet he doesn't lose a wink of sleep over this, or anything else for that matter.